Diving In

Nothing much happens on the weekends at UHDP. My first weekend here was a chance for me to orient myself, and, man, did I need it. I was able to wander around on the property at UHDP to get a feel for where everything is and did a bit more unpacking. I didn’t have any food so Ruth and I went into town for some groceries. I was looking forward to stocking up for the week, but getting groceries turned out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. Back home I have certain meals that I like to make, and it was hard to find all the ingredients that I needed for those meals. I gave up trying to find things for my “American” meals, and since I didn’t know any Thai meals, I wound up just getting a few things to snack on. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to find any chips and salsa, but I’m finding that I’m getting by just fine without my favorite snack.

On Sundays, Ruth and I have been going to a church in a Palaung village with Gurt and her two kids. Ruth has been going to that Church for a while so she knows a lot of the people there, and I am just starting to learn a few of their names. So far, I have had the chance to chat (with Ruth’s help) with a couple of older men who were enjoying a cup of tea and a smoke, and I have also spent some time with a few of the women of the village who shared a Thai melon with Ruth and I. The church service at the village lasts an hour and a half, and everyone sits on the floor with the men on one side and the women and children on the other. I recognized a few of the songs they sang, but I couldn’t understand anything else throughout the service. The guy who preaches at the church is actually from a Karen village who has been working in the Palaung village as a missionary. The preacher, Pi Yoong, and his wife, Pi Da, invited Ruth and I to have lunch with them after church so I have gotten to know them a bit. Pi Da speaks a little English but Pi Yoong doesn’t know any English. I was able to gather that Pi Yoong likes to talk a lot, and I have a feeling that going to their house will be good practice for me when I am able to understand the Thai language.

The work week was a good opportunity for me to get a feel for the pace of work at UHDP, as well as how all of the different projects are coming along. The pace of work is very laid back, which is a nice change from the American pace of life. There is a general outline of things that need to be worked on, but there’s no rush to get specific projects done by specific deadlines. Work starts at 8:00 in the morning, and we work until break time at 10:00. Work starts again at 10:30 and goes until lunch at 12:00. For lunch, everyone goes back to their house to make a dish and relax a bit, and then everyone slowly makes it back to what they were doing around 1:00. There is another break from 3:00 to 3:30, and people finish up work sometime between 4:30 and 5:00. This kind of a work pace is a lot different then what I’m used to because I’m used to working at a much faster pace. At UHDP, the staff tries to make work as fun a possible, and they don’t care about productivity and efficiency as much people care about it in the states. The long breaks allow the field workers a break from the sun and humidity, and it gives everyone a chance to chat with their co-workers. Lunch time is also a time to enjoy each others company while eating a meal because often times people will gather at someone’s house to eat lunch together. As different as the work pace feels, I think it has a lot to do with the sense of community here, and I am enjoying the cultural difference. I have had the chance to work with a few different staff members on their project so far. I have worked with Apot and Suphana in the nursery where all the agroforestry plants are propagated. Suphana, who is studying under Apot, is one of the 5 students at UHDP who has a staff person teaching them how to manage the different projects at UHDP. I have tagged along with Suphana and spent a day mixing soil together with some of the Palaung villagers from the church that I went to. Propagating plants is a big job in the nursery, and I have transplanted some of the seedlings in the nursery such as fish tail palm and rattan. I have also spent some time out in the organic gardens with Gurt and her student When. In the garden, we have done a lot of weeding because the gardens get overgrown during the wet season, and we have also been preparing the soil so that we can sow seeds when the dry season starts. Ruth and I have been helping Chai, the research director at UHDP, with his new stove project. Chai is making different molds for clay stoves so that he can figure out what the most fuel efficient stove design is. It has been interesting watching him use sheet metal and plastic buckets for the mold, and the stoves, themselves, are just made out of mud, burnt rice hulls, and a little bit of cement. The goal of the research projects at UHDP are to make them practical for the surrounding hilltribe villages, so Chai is trying to make the stoves with materials that are cheap and readily available for the local people.

After work I usually head back to the house to take a shower, and get something ready for dinner. I haven’t been doing much cooking myself yet, but I have been watching how Ruth makes meals, and I am slowly learning from her. Most nights we go over to Wha’s house and eat with Chai and Ajarn Dah, and when that doesn’t work out, we try to eat with other staff members like Gurt and Apot or Meh Nong Ket and Pi Singham. The meals that I’ve had at dinner have all been amazing, but I am still getting used to the spiciness of the food. I have learned to bring tissues with me when I go have a meal with someone so that I can wipe the sweat off my face and blow my nose. The dinners are always spicy and served with rice and nom prik, which is one of the few things I can make myself. Nom prik is a spicy paste made with roasted garlic, shallots, and chilies crushed together in a mortar and pestle along with cilantro, green onions, lemon grass, salt, and your choice of fried chicken skin, pork skin or fish from a can. Nom prik is eaten with things like boiled morning glory, bamboo, cucumbers, other cooked vegetables, and plain rice. The soups that are made are always good and spicy, and the stir fried dishes that are eaten with the rice are usually a mixture of meat and veggies with a bunch of spice and fish sauce added to it to top it off. The stir fried meals are much different than the meals that I had when I was in Bangkok and Cambodia with the Calvin group. There is no such thing as sweet and sour chicken at UHDP.

Eating meals together has been a good way to get to know the staff members at UHDP. I still can’t communicate much with them, but I enjoy spending time with them, and Ruth is able to translate for me if what I am trying to say is to complex for them to understand. It is fun to eat with Wah and Gurt because Wah knows English fairly well, and I can have very simple conversations with Gurt because she knows a few English words. Gurt’s son, Nong Pon, likes to play Uno and watch cartoons so I often do that with him after we eat, and I have also spent a lot of time catching insects with him because Ruth just recently found and insect net when she was in Chiang Mai. Once we got the net, Nong Pon has wanted to catch insects every chance he gets, which is great because I love to do it to. Before we got the net, Nong Pon would bash the insects with a stick, but now we can catch them without destroying them. Sometimes I feel like I have my own kids because Nong Pon and his friend Nong Ket are always coming to get me so that we can go out and play. It gets overbearing at times, but I enjoy spending time with them for the most part. I’m just glad that they aren’t really my kids, and that I can send them home to their moms if they get too obnoxious.

I have one more week at UHDP before I head down to Chiang Mai to start learning the Thai language at ISDSI. This past weekend I went down to Chiang Mai to pick up another intern, and I found myself a place to stay for the month while I’m studying at ISDSI. I was able to find a nice place in an area where local Thai people live so that I won’t be surrounded by all of the tourists that come to Chiang Mai. I know learning the language is going to be tough, but at this point, I’m really looking forward to it.

Time to Fly

Things got very interesting right from the get go. Last Tuesday I left Kalamazoo with my parents early in the morning and had a nice drive up to the airport in Grand Rapids. We got to the airport and checked in my luggage, but I was surprized when I found out that I would have to travel to a different airport when I reached Bangkok in order to catch my next flight to Chiang Mai. I was hoping to be able to check my bags all the way through to Chiang Mai, but that wasn’t going to be possible since I had to switch airports. This just goes to show you how much of a rookie I am when it comes to flying because this switch in airports was right there in my itinerary, but I failed to see it before the morning of my flight. I was mad at myself for being so stupid, but I was thankful that I found out about having to switch airports before I left, and that it wouldn’t be a surprise to me when I arrived in Bangkok. After I got that all figured out, I checked my flight (which was on time), said goodbye to my parents, got through security, and headed to my gate. I got to my gate about an hour before my flight was scheduled to leave, and everything was going fine until I saw that my flight was going to be delayed for 45 minutes. This concerned me because I only had a half hour layover in Chicago and this delay was going to make me miss my next flight. Thankfully, there was another flight flying out of Chicago to Tokyo so I was just switched over to that flight. My flight from Grand Rapids was delayed an additional 30 minutes, which only gave me a 20 minute layover in Chicago for me to catch my new flight. When I arrived in Chicago, I was only one terminal away from where my next flight was taking off from, so I was able to run to my next flight with 10 minutes to spare. Once I got on my flight from Chicago to Tokyo, I was able to relax. That flight lasted 11 and a half hours, but it seemed short. The section of plane that I was in had less than 10 people, and I had a lot of room around me to stretch out and get comfortable. I was able to watch a movie, do some reading, and get some sleep. I didn’t want to get off of that plane, and I wished it could have taken me all the way to Chiang Mai. My flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was much more cramped than my previous flight, and I realized that my flight being delayed in Grand Rapids was a blessing in disguise because I don’t think I could have lasted 11 and a half hours on a cramped flight. I slept on and off on the flight to Bangkok, and even though that flight was 7 hours, it seemed much longer. I eventually arrived in Bangkok, got through customs, and went off to find my bags, which were nowhere in sight. I was sent in circles trying to find someone who could help me locate my bags. After 45 minutes to an hour, I found someone who said that he could help me, and he told me that my bags were still in Chicago. I wasn’t that surprised when he told me because I barely made it myself to the plane in Chicago, and there was no way they were going to be able to transfer my luggage to that flight in 20 minutes. I thanked the guy for helping me, and I headed off to get a taxi to Don Muang airport. I arrived at the airport with only my carry on bag at 1 am Thailand time. The airport was closed so I had to wait until 4:30am for the airport to open and get to my gate. The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was a short 50 minute flight, and I arrived in Chiang Mai extremely exhausted and grateful that I didn’t have any more flights. Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but it made traveling to Chiang Mai a lot more exciting and everything worked out in the end.

When I arrived in Chiang Mai, I met up with both Pookie and Ruth, who I had been in contact with before I left. Pookie is a teacher at ISDSI, which is where I will be taking my Thai lessons, and Ruth is another intern who has been working at UHDP for the past 4 months. I was so thankful that they were kind enough to meet up with me in Chiang Mai. We went out for breakfast, and then I headed back with Ruth to one of her friends apartments where I crashed on the couch. I had called United to find out where my luggage was, and they told me that my luggage would most likely arrive the following morning at the airport in Chiang Mai. They told me that I had to come pick up the luggage so Ruth and I stayed in Chiang Mai for an extra day, which worked out great because I got to catch up more on my sleep. I ended up sleeping through most of the day as well as all night. The following morning Ruth and I picked up my luggage at the Chiang Mai airport and got a ride back to UHDP with Ajan Sumit and Ajan Dah, who happened to be in Chiang Mai for a meeting that day. It was a 2 hour ride from Chiang Mai up to UHDP, and I enjoyed being able to spend some time with people from UHDP even though Ajan Sumit and Ajan Dah know very little English.

The four of us arrived at UHDP in the early afternoon where I met more of the staff and settled into my room. I was really thankful that I was able to catch up on my sleep because that night they were having a big meal as a going away party for Aseng. Aseng recently got married and is moving down to Chiang Mai to live in the city after working at UHDP for 8 years. I helped the women in the kitchen prepare the meal by chopping up tilapia and vegetables. It was while I was helping prepare the meal when my first dose of culture shock started kicking in because I could not speak with the women in order to figure out what I was supposed to do to prepare the food. I had to watch what they were doing and try to communicate through hand motions. The women preparing the meal were concerned that I was not going to be able to handle the spiciness of the food, but I told them not to worry because I really like spicy food. The meal itself consisted of sticky rice, a spicy tilapia stir-fry, and a spicy soup. We all ate together outside on picnic tables, and I must say that it was very spicy. By the end of the meal my eyes were watering and my nose was running profusely, which has become a common occurrence for me at lot of the meals here. After diner, the staff at UHDP all met together in a house to say their goodbyes to Aseng. By this point I was getting used to everyone talking Thai around me and not being able to understand anything. I sat in the room and listened to people talk and Ruth was able to tell me a little bit about what everyone was saying. Even though I couldn’t understand what everyone was saying, I could tell that everyone was very sincere and that they were truly going to miss having Aseng at UHDP. I liked that they all went around and just talked about all the good times that they had with Aseng and how they wished him a good life in the city. Once they were done saying goodbye, Ajan Tui introduced me to the staff at UHDP as the new intern, and then we called it a night. I felt really bad that I couldn’t start talking with them and learn more about them, but none of them knew English well enough to have a conversation with except Ajan Tui. Everyone was very welcoming, but I still felt out of place because I couldn’t talk with them in Thai, and I had no way of knowing how much of my English they understood. I knew that communicating was going to be hard, and my frustration with communicating has made me want to learn the Thai language even more. After meeting everyone I could tell that I was going to like it at UHDP, and that in time it would begin to feel more and more like home.

Wow, I have been writing for a while now and I have only gotten through my first day. maybe I'm going into too much detail :P I will try and write another post sometime soon to let you know how this past work week went for me. I'm doing very well, and I thank you all for your prayers.